In Defence of War

Nigel Biggar

Provides a succinct account of the logic, strengths, and weaknesses of religious and non-religious pacifism.

Reasserts the complex moral reasoning of the early Christian just war tradition from Augustine to Grotius against the exclusive rights-talk of liberal just war thinking.

Explains how to order the use of the various criteria of just war, so as to produce a coherent final judgement.

Includes painstaking analysis of the 2003 Iraq invasion, concluding that it was justified - on its tenth anniversary in 2013.

Contains a moral analysis of Britain's involvement in the First World War, concluding that it too was justified - on the eve of the centenary of its outbreak in 1914.

In Defence of War

Nigel Biggar

Description

Pacifism is popular. Many hold that war is unnecessary, since peaceful means of resolving conflict are always available, if only we had the will to look for them. Or they believe that war is wicked, essentially involving hatred of the enemy and carelessness of human life. Or they posit the absolute right of innocent individuals not to be deliberately killed, making it impossible to justify war in practice.

Peace, however, is not simple. Peace for some can leave others at peace to perpetrate mass atrocity. What was peace for the West in 1994 was not peace for the Tutsis of Rwanda. Therefore, against the virus of wishful thinking, anti-military caricature, and the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency
can be morally justified, even though tragic and morally flawed.

Recovering the Christian tradition of reflection running from Augustine to Grotius, this book affirms aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice. Morally realistic in adhering to universal moral principles, it recognises that morality can trump legality, justifying military intervention even in transgression of positive international law-as in the case of Kosovo. Less cynical and more empirically realistic about human nature than Hobbes, it holds that nations desire to be morally virtuous and right, and not only to be safe and fat. And aspiring to practical realism, it argues that love and the doctrine of double effect can survive combat; and that the constraints of proportionality, while real, are
nevertheless sufficiently permissive to encompass Britain's belligerency in 1914-18. Finally, in a painstaking analysis of the Iraq invasion of 2003, In Defence of War culminates in an account of how the various criteria of just war should be thought together. It also concludes that, all things considered, the invasion was justified.

In Defence of War

Nigel Biggar

Table of Contents

Introduction: Against the Virus of Wishful Thinking1. Against Christian Pacifism2. Love in War3. The Principle of Double Effect: Can it Survive Combat?4. Proportionality: Lessons from the Somme and the First World War5. Against Legal Positivism and Liberal Individualism6. On Not Always Giving the Devil Benefit of Law: Legality, Morality, and Kosovo7. Constructing Judgement: The Case of IraqConclusionBibliography

In Defence of War

Nigel Biggar

Author Information

Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and Director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life, at the University of Oxford, where he is also a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral. Before taking up his current post in 2007, he held chairs in Theology at the University of Leeds and at Trinity College Dublin. Among his published works are: Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics (2011), (co-ed.) Religious Voices in Public Places (2009), Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia (2004); and (ed.) Burying the Past: Making Peace and Doing Justice after Civil Conflict (2001, 2003). He sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Military Ethics and has lectured at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

In Defence of War

Nigel Biggar

Reviews and Awards

"In Defence of War is an excellent book ... Combining deep understanding of the just-war tradition with impressive knowledge of military history, this book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate. I highly recommend it"
-- James Anderson, Expository Times

"This is a significant book. It provides a defense and clarification of just war theory within the Christian tradition through a series of extended engagements with Christian and secular critics of that theory. Biggar makes a clear and important case, and does so with impressive learning and literary style"
--Kenneth R. Himes, Theological Studies

"In Defence of War is a searching, challenging book. It deserves much discussion"
--John Kelsay, Studies in Christian Ethics

"Biggar's careful moral reasoning offers a model that, if followed, would deepen and mature the Christian discussion of the ethics of war and peace. And, if I may say, his book ought especially to be read by those who, at first blush, will be shocked or even appalled by its title... Many churchmen affirm what they understand to be the moral criteria of the just war tradition, but as a practical matter they cannot imagine a just use of armed force - which tends to subtract religious thinkers and their insights from the debates where policy is actually devised. If Nigel Biggar's book gets churchmen thinking seriously about war and peace again, that might change." --First Things: Religion and Public Life"

"This is a significant book. It provides a defense and clarification of just war theory within the Christian tradition through a series of extended engagements with Christian and secular critics of that theory. Biggar makes a clear and important case, and does so with impressive learning and literary style... This is as intellectually satisfying a book on the morality of warfare as is available today." --Theological Studies

In Defence of War

Nigel Biggar

From Our Blog

Britain and the United States have been suffering from intervention fatigue. The reason is obvious: our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven far more costly and their results far more mixed and uncertain than we had hoped. This fatigue manifested itself in almost exactly a year ago, when Britain's Parliament refused to let the Government offer military support to the U.S. and France in threatening punitive strikes against Syria's Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons.

By Nigel Biggar
It could well be that current negotiations between the United States, France, and Russia will lead to the Assad regime's surrender of its chemical weapons. Everyone -- bar the regime itself -- has a legitimate interest in seeing that happen. Meanwhile, the civil war in Syria drags on, in which far more people have been killed -- and will yet be killed -- by conventional weapons than by chemical ones. What stance should we take toward this complex conflict, morally speaking?